If you’ve found yourself on this page, you know that a dog’s diet is a key factor in their long-term health—and you want to be sure that your best friend’s food is made by qualified professionals who have pets’ long-term well-being in mind.
Every recipe from The Farmer’s Dog is developed by our on-staff, board-certified nutritionists. We recently talked to them about their reasons for getting into the field, what education and experience they needed to become board-certified, what they do for our company and the dogs we feed—and what you should know before picking a pet food. Here are some of the key takeaways from our conversation.
There are two main types of board-certified nutritionist (we have both)
Board-certified companion animal nutritionists and Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionists® each have important and unique expertise in the field of nutrition, and The Farmer’s Dog employs both.
Ryan Yamka, PhD, MS, MBA, CPT, FACN, PAS, Dipl ACAS
Board-certified companion animal nutritionists are research-focused, and require a master’s degree and a Ph.D. to become a Professional Animal Scientist (PAS). They must then pass the required tests for board certification. Dr. Ryan Yamka, our own board-certified companion animal nutritionist, has diplomat status with the American College of Animal Sciences. At the time of this article’s publication, there are only three professionals in the United States who have this specific combination of qualifications. There are way more people in outer space right now!
A Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionist®, meanwhile, is a veterinarian whose speciality is nutrition—the way a board-certified veterinarian might specialize in anesthesiology or surgery. A Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionist® must earn a veterinary degree, gain experience via an internship or several years of clinical practice, complete a residency training program, and pass a two-day test. They also have to be the primary author on a publication in an accepted journal, to give them a better understanding of research. That’s a high bar to clear, which is why there are very few board-certified veterinary nutritionists in the United States. There are only around 100—and two of them, Dr. Rae Sires and Dr. Joe Wakshlag, work for The Farmer’s Dog.
Achieving this level of education and experience takes a tremendous commitment, so it should come as no surprise that our board-certified nutritionists love dogs and are passionate about their health. Dr. Yamka was pre-vet as a college undergraduate, and pursued nutrition because he felt he could impact the greatest number of dogs by formulating their food.
Dr. Wakshlag, who’s been with our company since the beginning, was also fascinated with animal nutrition from a young age. “When I was five years old,” he remembers, “I used to ask my parents, ‘What do monkeys eat? What do guinea pigs eat?’”
Dr. Sires dreamed of becoming a vet from childhood, and decided to focus on nutrition when she saw a package of prescription food for kidney disease—which made her think about food’s power to make dogs healthier. “We can delay kidney disease,” she says. “We can prevent urinary stone formation. We can impact diarrhea and improve the quality of life for animals and owners. All you have to do is change what you eat, and you change everything.”
Rae Sires, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition)
It’s important for a pet-food company to have board-certified nutritionists—but it’s just as important what they do
Board-certified nutritionists formulate every one of our recipes. Not every dog-food company can say that.
Dr. Yamka says to look at the details of how a company is using its nutritionists. “There’s lots of times,” he says, “where board-certified nutritionists work in [a company’s] sales or marketing department.” There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this, but it won’t impact the nutritional composition of that company’s food.
At The Farmer’s Dog, Dr. Yamka brings his perspective and years of research experience to every formulation, making sure that it provides optimal nutrition for dogs in every stage of life, from puppies to seniors. Dr. Sires, meanwhile, brings her experience as a practicing veterinarian. “I have really focused on the health and management, and particularly managing disease, in individual animals,” she explains. This is particularly valuable when it comes to the clinical indications for our foods—when it’s appropriate to feed them to dogs being treated for particular illnesses. We have options suitable for dogs with conditions including acute and chronic colitis, adverse food response, diabetes, and many others. Of course, for questions about your dog’s health, ask your vet.
Joe Wakshlag, DVM, PhD, DACVIM (Nutrition)
Here’s what nutritionists say you should look for in a dog food.
It may sound obvious, but it’s worth stating plainly that what you feed your dog is one of the biggest keys to their longterm health. “Food,” says Dr. Yamka, “is the number-one greatest environmental impact you will have on yourself and on your animal.” And, unlike a lot of other factors in your dog’s environment, “you can control that.”
Keeping this in mind, there are certain requirements that board-certified nutritionists consider nonnegotiable in a dog’s daily diet. The first is an Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) statement indicating that it’s safe for daily feeding. The statement will specify whether a food is for puppies (AAFCO’s terminology here is “growth and reproduction”) or adult dogs (“adult maintenance”)—The Farmer’s Dog is safe for dogs in any stage of life, as soon as they’re weaning.
“There’s a huge book, over 300 pages, that talks about how to make an appropriate dog food,” Dr. Wakshlag says of the AAFCO guidelines. “It’s sort of the Bible of dog-food production in this country.”
But while an AAFCO statement is an absolute must, it’s by no means all you need to look for in a dog food.
Dr. Yamka says that any company who’s feeding your dog should be able to answer these five questions:
- Who formulates your food, and what are their qualifications?
- Do your products meet an AAFCO nutrition profile, as verified by a third-party nutrition analysis on all of your finished products?
- Do you conduct third-party digestibility studies for each of your formulas?
- Do you have a positive-release program and ensure there are not any microbial contamination issues?
- Does the manufacturing facility where your food is made have third-party safety certifications in place?
As noted above, board-certified nutritionists formulate every recipe from The Farmer’s Dog, and we can answer “yes” to all of these questions. All of our sourcing, cooking, packaging, and storing processes meet the same standards as those for human foods. Furthermore, says Dr. Wakshlag, “fresh, whole-food diets like ours are easily digestible”—third-party studies show that our foods are highly digestible and nutritionally bioavailable.
Companies should be willing to answer specific inquiries about the nutrients in their food—passing along their full list of ingredients or the proportions of nutrients like protein, fiber, and fat in their typical analysis (that’s a term for a test showing the nutritional contents of their food). “It’s not proprietary,” says Dr. Sires of this more-detailed nutrition information for dog food, “and companies should be regularly testing their products and happy to share the results!”
The same goes for us—if you have any questions for us or our board-certified nutritionists, please reach out. You can contact us here.
